King’s challenger another Ballinger

vote, Mark Moore, 16-year-olds, Arkansas primaries, Goodson, photo IDThe March 3 primaries feature two state Senate primaries where Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders supports a challenger opposing a sitting Republican senator. 

Both senators voted against her administration’s proposed Franklin County prison in the last legislative session.

The two are Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, of District 28, and Sen. Ronald Caldwell, R-Wynne, of District 10. King faces Bobby Ballinger, while Caldwell faces Trey Bohannan.

The support of Ballinger over King is not surprising. King is a bluntly speaking and cussedly independent senator who often clashes with Republican Party leadership – particularly Sen. Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, the Senate president pro tempore. 

Caldwell is not an obvious thorn in the leadership’s side. But he did vote against funding the prison, which failed to make it out of the Senate last year after five votes but remains on the table.

We’ll focus on the District 28 race. It’s the third time King has faced a Ballinger. King defeated Ballinger’s dad, former state Sen. Bob Ballinger, to claim the seat in 2022. The elder Ballinger had ousted King from his state Senate seat in 2018. Continue reading →

Arkansas projects get funded as debt elephant gets ignored

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the Union, deficit hawks, balanced budget amendment, Jonathan Bydlak, immigration, $98.8 trillion, $970 billion, debt elephantCongress has funded most but not all of the government. Four members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation secured hundreds of millions of dollars for highways and other state projects. Meanwhile, a nonpartisan group is warning of the consequences of ever-increasing government debt.

That paragraph pretty much sums up the federal budget news from the past couple of weeks, with more to come. 

As you may not have noticed, there was another government shutdown last week, though only a partial, brief one. It ended when President Trump on Feb. 3 passed the second of two bills that funded government operations through September – all except for the Department of Homeland Security, which got funding for only two weeks until Feb. 13.

Democrats balked at funding that agency because they want major reforms to its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations. As of Sunday evening, the question had not been resolved. 

So we’re in another partial government shutdown. Continue reading →

Registered Democrats can’t vote in GOP primaries, but they can change at the polls

By Steve Brawner, © 2026 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

This year’s open primary elections in Arkansas will be a little more closed, but only to Democrats seeking to vote in the Republican primary.

Traditionally, every Arkansas voter freely could vote in the Republican, Democratic, or a nonpartisan primary. The latter voters cast a shorter ballot featuring only judicial and other nonpartisan races.

Some Republicans in recent years have argued that their primary should be reserved for Republicans. They’ve argued that crossover Democrats could be affecting the results.

That’s a reasonable position. 

The counter argument is that less than 8.2% of the state’s voters are registered Republicans, so others would have to either declare their allegiance to a party or otherwise not vote. Not voting in the Republican primary in much of Arkansas means skipping the election that often matters the most. Continue reading →

The University of Arkansas’ ‘radical shift’

By Steve Brawner, © 2026 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

What happened January 28 at the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees meeting was indeed a “radical shift.”

That’s how one trustee, Judd Deere, accurately described it in speaking later to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The board voted to transfer somewhere between $10 million and $11 million annually from university operations to the athletic department. The vote was 7-3, with Deere one of the three voting no.

The shift is occurring in two ways. First, the trustees’ resolution ends the athletic department’s annual transfer of funding to the university, which has averaged $4.4 million the last three years. Second, the resolution calls on Chancellor Dr. Charles Robinson and Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek to create a plan for the university to generate $6 million annually for the athletic department. 

Robinson and Yurachek said they had not seen the resolution prior to the meeting.

What made this shift “radical” is the fact that the UA has long taken pride in being one of a small number of major universities nationwide that hasn’t subsidized its athletic department.  Continue reading →

Why Roby Brock has bought four small-town newspapers – and may be buying more

Roby BrockLocal communities need local news, but can local newspapers still be profitable? Roby Brock believes so, which is one reason why he has bought four of them in the past seven months.

Brock, 60, is the CEO of Natural State Media, the parent company of the statewide Talk Business & Politics website and the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal. He’s also the host of KARK-TV’s “Capitol View” television show, where he interviews state business and political leaders.

Through a separate venture, he’s been buying small-town newspapers. First was The England Democrat last July followed by The Waldron News, The Grand Prairie Herald, and The Fordyce News-Advocate. He’s seriously looking at two more. 

“I think that newspapers, for small communities and rural communities in particular, are still a fantastic and viable vehicle for communicating news to those communities,” he told me. “So, you ask me why I’m investing in these things personally? I think there’s still a business model there, and I think there’s still value there.” Continue reading →